Interesting stuff I came across last month:
- The giant shipworm (three foot long, lives on hydrogen sulfide, within a calcium carbonate tube that it secretes) has finally been located (by scientists, that is … local people in certain parts of Thailand have been eating it as a delicacy)
- Say what you want about Stephen Wolfram, I’m beginning to love the long-form posts I read at his blog, such as this one on civilizational artifacts (enjoyable apart from the plug for Wolfram Language)
- Apparently, plants are quite active at long time scales, and can be sedated, just like animals! (there’s a good GIF on that page, of pea tendrils, that I wasn’t able to embed here)
When the dope wore off, the plants returned to life, as if something had hit pause — almost like they were regaining consciousness, something we typically don’t think they possess. It’s all so animal-like.
- If you like typewriters …
- An example of a new species (the mutant crawfish) emerging in just a couple of decades
- Blast from the past: in 1995, an article about disruption in the supercomputer industry (never happened)
- Continuing on the sea creatures theme for a bit: starfish have eyes. Below their arms. Scallops have eyes too, on their tentacles (with two retinas each) … I suppose the real puzzle being why?
- Excellent summary of the importance of the role of “the log” in distributed systems and real-time data processing
- Part-entertaining and part-insightful, an opinionated guide to Haskell for 2018
- Oracle has finally made
dtraceavailable for Linux. Personally this seems too little too late given that we have BPF now, but it’s still a good thing - Yes, there is a turing-complete Powerpoint
- Couple of viewpoints on “unthinkable thoughts” using programming languages.
- A certain unicode character became an iOS-crashing bug.
- Finally, something for the very young with lots of time on their hands: learning Physics using Haskell!
Abacus Noir 